$20 million gate for Mayweather-Canelo confirmed, biggest gate in Nevada history

In the world of boxing you can never really believe what a promoter tells you, especially if it’s at a press conference. However, Keith Kizer of the Nevada State Athletic Commission confirmed today via email that the Floyd Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez fight on September 14 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, did indeed bring home a $20 million gate, making it the largest gate in Nevada history.

Credit: Esther Lin / Showtime

Mayweather vs. Canelo barely, just barely, scraped by the $20 million barrier but they were able to reach that threshold. Here are the details which Kizer provided:

Gate – $20,003,150

Paid tickets – 16,146

Unsold – 0

Comps – 50

There’s a couple of interesting points here. Mayweather vs. Canelo was a true sellout, with zero available spaces left in the arena.

Comps, giveaways and unused tickets can often total in the hundreds or thousands for a fight, so the promotion can reach that coveted “sellout” and garner more attention while actually being far from that goal, but in this case, there were only 50 comps. That’s basically the family members for Mayweather and Canelo. Anybody else, and they bought a ticket.

On top of that, they brought in another $2.5 million from closed circuit sales. That’s people paying to watch the fight in a room together, simply in town at a Las Vegas hotel, and more than 26,000 ponied up the cash for the privilege.

Now, the question which remains is whether Mayweather vs. Canelo broke the all-time PPV record. Mayweather’s fight against Oscar De La Hoya produced approximately 2.4 million buys, and all throughout the promotion of Mayweather-Canelo, the keyword was “2.5 million PPV buys”.

That information hasn’t come through yet. However, with the new PPV prices of $64.95 for standard definition and $74.95 for high definition, and more HD televisions on the market than ever before, it seems as if the fight could be lock to break the PPV revenue record, even if it doesn’t break the sales record. It was also one of the highest rated television events in Mexican history, with about 77% of TV homes tuning in.

Either way, Floyd Mayweather is coming home with a helluva lot of money. His largest-ever guaranteed purse of $41.5 million could end up doubling by the time it’s all said and done.